An August Challenge

So the new book is finished. Really finished. It has a title and everything: "The Lessons". It's going to be published on 15 April 2010. The one thing I have left to do with the text is to work with the copy-editor, but that's things like "this person is 18 years old here and then, three years later, he's 20. How shall we best fix that?" It's not going to be major structural work, hopefully. It's done.

It feels weird. It's four years since I started working on this novel. I've spent longer writing my novel about Oxford than I actually spent at Oxford.*

Anyway, novel-writing is a famously lonely, isolating business, in which most of your time is spent indoors, trying to establish a writing routine. You know it's going well, basically, when you spend weeks sitting indoors at your desk, or in the library (I've never understood how people can write in cafes), not doing much new.

But it's over now. And although I'm starting research work for the new novel, I'm not at the "chained to the desk" stage yet. And it's August tomorrow, when the working world goes a bit slowly. And I'm in London. And I can't help feeling that although I've lived here my whole life, there are still many more things I haven't seen than those I have. So, I have A Plan. Here it is.

The Challenge

Go somewhere new every day in August.

The Parameters

• A new place, not a new thing. That is, this challenge isn't fulfilled if I go to see a new play at a venue I've been to before. Or a new exhibition at a museum I've been to before.


• There is no time or importance component. The challenge is fulfilled if I pop into a shop I've never been to before for five minutes. Although I hope I'll do more interesting things than that. Part of the idea though is to just explore a bit more - it's so easy to get stuck in ruts of going to the same newsagent to buy the paper, the same cafe for lunch... even changing these things counts.


• Driving through doesn't count. Walking through might count. Getting out of the car and taking some pictures definitely counts.


• Trips to things local to me - a new restaurant on Brent Street, that weird shop on Church Road - count just as much as expeditions to Major Tourist Destinations.

The Evidence

To write something - a few sentences at least - about every new place I go to. And probably post pictures of most of them.

The Exception

I know that towards the end of August I'll be going away to a place I went to a lot as a teenager but haven't been back to for at least 15 years. Because, as we all know, The Past Is A Foreign Country, it counts. As long as I write about it.

So that's it! Although I know that people typically do blog challenges far more intensely and always for a year for some reason, I'm still a bit nervous posting this. What if, after day seven, I am too exhausted or bored to carry on? What if I get ill? So the answer is: there's no expectation of perfection here. This is my goal. Let's see how I go with it.

Oh, and if you know me, and think you know somewhere cool I've never been to before, let me know and we'll go together!

Edit at 5pm:

Two other thoughts on what counts and what doesn't:

• Going to a new branch of the same chain doesn't count. eg, I've been to a Cafe Rouge before. Thus, for the purposes of this challenge, no Cafe Rouge counts.


• Conversely, if there's a specific event which transforms a public space at a particular time, then it probably counts. Judgement must be used but, eg, if I've walked through a road which has a farmer's market before but never been there when the market is taking place, then going to the market counts. This makes sense to me!

* I went to hear Melvyn Bragg speak in Brighton a couple of months ago. He was talking about an autobiographical novel he'd written about how his family and home community changed while he was away at Oxford. He said "I didn't want to write just another Oxford novel," which of course made me spend two gloomy weeks going "oh God, I've spent four years on it, and it's just another Oxford novel."

My super first day

My contribution to Andrea's fun project, detailed here: http://www.mysuperfirstday.com/

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It went the same way it always goes in my dreams. I was sitting at a table, after dinner with friends, playing with a screwed-up twist of paper napkin. I put the wisp of paper onto the table and I remembered.

That's how it always is: not wondering, or thinking, or feeling, but suddenly remembering that, oh yes, I always knew how to do this. There is amazement, too: how could I have forgotten? And relief: at last I have remembered myself.

I moved my hands away from the paper and reached out with my mind. Concentrate, concentrate. I had dreamed this so many times before; the dreams were my warning sign, as it transpired, the harbinger. And in the dreams the first time is always the hardest.  Internal muscles shrieking with disuse as I pulled at them, forced them, and, and.

Yes. The paper moved. Just a fraction. Just as much as if I had blown at it. But I hadn't blown at it. I'd moved it with my mind.

"Look!" I said to my friends, "see, see what I can do."
They were toying with their wineglasses, wondering if they could ask for another helping of trifle, or yawning and thinking of their beds. It was late, a Friday night after a busy week.
"Look!" I said, and placed the piece of tissue onto an empty, overturned, juice carton.
Even now, just the second time, my control was growing.
I eased that mental muscle into operation, reached out with my mind and... hovered the tissue for two or three seconds above the juice carton before loosing my hold and allowing it to fall back.

My friends looked at me.

There would be more days to come. As my powers grew stronger, as I exercised that muscle, there would be the first day I found I could lift a television, a car. There would be the day I realised I could lift myself, and so fly. But that first day the most important thing was how my friends looked at me. Not with admiration or surprise. Not with delight. Not with interest. Only, and thereafter, with horror.

The Man in the Mirror

I have been more touched by the death of Michael Jackson than I would have anticipated. Which is to say that I would not have expected to be touched at all, and I find that I am, somewhat.

I suppose the reasons are the same as anyone else of my age: his songs were the background soundtrack to my youth, and his personal life was too bizarre and sad not to call for some reflection at its end.

So, like everyone else in the world, I've found myself listening to Michael Jackson songs the past couple of days. And while listening to Man in the Mirror - a song which hit the charts at the height of my Smash-Hits-reading period - I had a thought which I suppose is as close as I'm likely to get to a meditation on Jackson's passing.

It's a deeply and cruelly ironic song, of course. As far as one can tell, Jackson seems to have suffered from appalling body dysmorphia, and apparently therefore had lifelong problems with "the man in the mirror".

But it also seems to me to be a song which reflects a particular obsession of my generation - perhaps of the post-Second-World-War generations - to see 'working on yourself' as being as good as, if not more important than, working on the world.

The song's lyrics do make some reference to "Kids In The Street,
With Not Enough To Eat", but don't get as far as suggesting what could be done for these starving children. Instead, the focus is this 'man in the mirror' and the song's primary force is the repeated refrain:

"If You Wanna Make The
World A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change"

On the surface it's quite an inspiring thought, bringing to mind Ghandi's saying "you must be the change you wish to see in the world". But in fact I think it's just the opposite.

I appeared on a panel a few months ago in Bath with Sarah Dunant and Joan Bakewell (very thrilling) where we talked about women and their relationships to their bodies. In that conversation, and in what I've read about Susie Orbach's new book the issue of being 'sidetracked' by the body came up several times. That somehow we - perhaps women more than men, although I'm sure men are catching up - have been duped into believing that it is more important to improve our bodies than to improve society.

As William Leith says in that review: "capitalism works much better if we hate our bodies. If we're anxious and needy, we are better consumers; if we're anxious and needy when it comes to something as fundamental as our bodies, we are putty in the hands of marketeers and diet-merchants".

It used to be that people were exhorted to ignore their own desires and act for the collective good (remember 'lie back and think of England'?). And that wasn't a great way to live. But obsessing with achieving perfection in yourself, thinking that you can only do good in the world if you've become a perfect person isn't great either. In fact, as there's no such thing as a perfect person, it'll only lead you down ever more terrifying, anxious roads of self-loathing and fear. As one can see from Michael Jackson's horrifying, fruitless quest for some strange physical goal.

There is a middle ground, and it's up to each of us to find it. It's OK to want to improve yourself, but you are good enough *right now* to start trying to improve the world too.

If you want to make the world a better place, stop staring at yourself, go out and make a change.

Ada Lovelace Day

I've already written an article for today about Ada Lovelace Day and how important it is (and also how heinous The Big Bang Theory sitcom is - a message I really feel passionately about getting out to the public).

But I realise that what I wrote doesn't really meet the brief of writing about a woman in technology whom I admire, although I name a few there. While researching and thinking about that article I did a lot of research and turned up women working in fields I'd always unconsciously thought of as total male bastions. It occurred to me that part of the problem is the technology isn't really a personality-driven industry. Apple stock may rise and fall with Steve Jobs' health, and Sid Meier certainly wants us to know about his games, but I found I couldn't name the creators of some of my favourite games or gadgets. I just knew them by the product brand. There really aren't so many 'tech idols' or 'celebrity programmers'.

Added to that, technology is by its nature a collaborative field. In conversation recently, I found myself describing computers as the cathedrals of our times: everyone can have moments of wonder about them, because no single person could ever create a device that does what these astonishing boxes do. What we do together outweighs what we can ever do alone. So yeah, I don't know the names of all the people who had the precise insights that led to the thin-screen monitor I'm looking at right now. Or the development of the USB I use to plug my iPod into my MacBook. Or any of those thousands of tiny innovations.

But in that spirit, I want to single out a couple of names of women who invented systems that have invisibly revolutionised our lives. I wish I had the specialised skill to give a very detailed explanation of what they did, but I am instead relying on information gleaned from the internet, another collective human enterprise.

Erna Schneider Hoover invented a computerised telephone exchange system whose basic principles are still in use today. Her invention  means that our lives aren't constantly filled with dropped calls and false busy-signals whenever we try to use a telephone line. Which, since you're reading this on the internet, is right now. Oh, and she also has a BA in Medieval History and a PhD in Philosophy. And dude, if you think a modern woman can't have it all... she has four grandchildren and her first patent application was made while she was on maternity leave.

And for a more recent heroine of innovation, Shafi Goldwasser has twice won the Godel Prize for theoretical computer science. She is a pioneer in the field of online security working at MIT and her work on digital signatures is part of what allows modern banking systems to function. And with a name like that, she is of course also my homegirl.

It's been amazing to do the research for this project. I really didn't know how many women there were doing wonderful work in technology. Roll on next year's Ada Lovelace Day!

The Devil's Whore

The Devil's Whore, new Channel 4 drama, written by Peter "Our Friends in the North" Flannery. It's really good. If you're in England and haven't seen it yet, go here and watch it now: http://www.channel4.com/video/brandless-catchup.jsp?vodBrand=the-devils-whore

What's so good about it? It looks like one of those bodice-ripping costume dramas the BBC does with such pre-Christmas gentility. But, it's not. Maybe it's because I'm in the midst of reading The Golden Notebook, but only one episode in this series seems to me to be a drama about feminism, class struggle, all the hierarchies in society and what we make of them. I love that it's not concentrating on the details of the Civil War. You can't watch this drama to learn stuff you didn't learn at school. The Civil War in The Devil's Whore (hmmm, they are strangely assonant) is a metaphor.

A civil war is a confusing thing; in a scene about halfway through the first episode, John Sim's character deftly swaps sides in the middle of the battle. Nobles are fighting alongside Parliamentarians. Some common men remain loyal to the King. The thing about a civil war is that it pits brother against brother, friend against friend. How can you fight with someone that close?

What's brilliant about the series is that it demonstrates, subtley, how that same problem applies to modern class warfare and gender warfare. Flannery's interest in class struggle was clear in Our Friends in the North. (The man was born in Jarrow, for goodness' sake.)  But in this new series he links together the problems of class warfare with those of feminism. Was there ever a woman like the heroine, Angelica Fanshawe (or is it Featherstonehaugh)? Was there a woman who became an atheist at eight, married her cousin, refused to accept the silence proper to women, tried to fight alongside him? Probaby not. Angelica is a modern woman, transplanted. The point is: she cannot fight back against her husband's attempts to 'master' her, because she loves him. The same ties that bind her to him are the ties that make it difficult for loyal subjects to rebel against their King.  The Civil War *is* the feminist revolution. How can we fight? We need each other.

I'm making it sound like a political tract. It's not at all. It's just very good, deep, worthy of re-watching, of chewing over and analysing like an excellent piece of literature. I expect I'll have more to say on it as it goes on.